Guide to Starting a Successful Business

Each year thousands of Papua New Guineans dream about becoming their own boss. Often times, you will hear words like “I’m going to start my own business.” Many people tend to believe that the way to financial security and happiness is to do your own thing or to develop a new product no one else has. So they rush out and start their own business. In many cases, this is the path they take. Unfortunately, many take the plunge unprepared and as a result die even before they reach maturity.

Business to me is like any other games people play. There are said and unsaid rules one has to master and if you think you can just get in there and hit the jackpot, then please be prepared to be knocked out early by million surprises that’s awaiting you.

Starting a business is a costly investment indeed. It will cost you capital, time, effort and your reputation. Therefore it is wise to prepare early to minimize your losses and maximize your gains as you play the game call business. Many people start a business with the mindset that they want to be their own boss. They soon find out they are their own boss but a real bad boss who gets them to work much harder than they were with a steady paycheck job.

A real successful business is one that can work without you. You can go on holiday for few months and still find your business making more profit. If you are in a business that can’t operate without you, then obviously, it going to take ages to really make a financial break through.

Forming a new business is one of the most significant financial decisions you can ever make. It may cost you your hard earned personal wealth and assets, which may have taken years to accumulate. Building a successful business is even more challenging than buying property or shares. The risks are high but comes with greater rewards. I find business more challenging than investing.

My small finance business call Leverage Finance is a capital raiser. It generates cash that I invest in revenue generating assets. When it comes to investment, I am a disciple of father of value investing Benjamin Graham and billionaire Warren Buffet. Value investing thought by the Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffet guides me to raise capital and invest in undervalued securities for a long term.

That’s my strategy and it works for me. So I really don’t need a large business to run. A small but profitable enough to meet cash capital requirements for my personal investment is what I desire. That is not to discourage you from getting into business. I know also that business comes with even greater rewards. Then most important thing is to get educated and make your own decisions rather than buy into someone else ideas then to regret later on.

Self-employment is perceived by many who think embarking on an entrepreneurial journey leads to financial freedom. It does indeed. But it takes more than just owning a business. I once interviewed a Taiwanese entrepreneur whose company is worth US$5 billion and he said to me. To be successful in business requires years of commitment, tenacity, sheer hard work and dose of good fortune. Business takes years to grow and mature and start producing positive returns. By starting your business, you are committed to lengthy period of hours at work, far greater than time spent on your paid job and often times, faced with lean finances.

Good news is, doing business has become easier these days than it was in the industrial age with the help of technology. Technology is the most powerful leverage you have. There are more millionaires and billionaires created in this century than even before simply because many are coming to know the power of leverage and using it to their benefit. PNG is just waking up to that realization.

A successful business requires technical and people skills. You must learn to master the mindset required to succeed in business.

Those who have been in network marketing would have clear idea of what a business system looks like. In network marketing, like Proma, Qnet, which I was once a member, your job is to get the necessary education and training and then duplicate the success steps by building your downs consisting of people. As your down lines grow and they started adding more people to your network, your earnings become passive.

If you build a business where you work full time, you have basically created another job for yourself. If you go on holiday, the income goes as well. Rich people look for and build business systems that continues to generate cash flow even when they aren’t around. Look at the network marketing business system I illustrated above. Having a mindset to build a system like this is the mindset of a millionaire or put simply, a millionaire mindset.

To be successful in business requires four things;

1. Ownership and control of a cash flow generating system
2. Management of the system and the cash flow
3. Ability to lead people and manage people
4. Knowledge to turn your earned income to passive and portfolio income